Boo!

It’s a quiet day at my office. Lots of people are calling with questions, but nobody wants to actually come see me. Every other day this week, I have lots of appointments. There must be something about Halloween where people think it’s a bad day to see a lawyer.

I certainly know a few lawyers who I felt may have been vampires, and others who seemed at least borderline demonic. It might be also that lawyers as a profession are more nocturnal than those engaged in many lines of work. A few years ago the wags on KS95 were making a point of telling lawyer jokes around 6 am on the theory that the lawyers would not be up yet at that time, which for the most part I believe was true.

I just received a call from a gentleman in the State of Tennessee. He had a bankruptcy question, but I recommended that he find a lawyer from his own state to ask. Bankruptcy law is federal, but the application of it still varies widely from state to state. There are many questions of interpretation of the new law where the individual courts disagree widely. Asset exemptions are set by state law, and that can make a dramatic difference in the outcome concerning what a debtor may be allowed to keep.

Yesterday a gentleman called who had moved within the past two years from Texas to Wisconsin to Minnesota. He wants to file a bankruptcy here. There are provisions of the new law which are intended to discourage shopping for favorable exemptions by moving from state to state. Under those provisions, if this gentleman wanted to file here right now he would probably have to claim the exemptions provided for under Texas law. What a mess! I have never practiced law in Texas, but all of a sudden I may need to know something about their exemption laws. The last time that happened I made a point of consulting with a lawyer from the state in question. Every now and then I get a call from a lawyer in some other state with a similar question about Minnesota exemption laws.

This has been quite a ramble, if you have managed to keep reading to this point. All I meant to say was HAPPY HALLOWEEN.!

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